List of Major League Soccer stadiums
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Major League Soccer (MLS) is the premier professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. The league has 29 teams in 29 stadiums as of the 2023 season: 26 in the United States and 3 in Canada; a 30th team is planned to enter in 2025. At the time of the league's inauguration in 1996, MLS teams used multi-purpose stadiums, often shared with National Football League (NFL) or college football teams. Because of lower attendance, these stadiums had rows of seats covered in tarps to limit capacity. Starting in 1999 with the Columbus Crew's construction of Historic Crew Stadium, the league has constructed soccer-specific stadiums which are tailor-made for soccer and which have smaller capacity. Today, the majority of MLS stadiums are soccer-specific stadiums. While the league's early stadiums relied heavily on public financing, several modern soccer-specific stadiums have been majority-funded by clubs and their owners.[1]
The league's soccer-specific stadiums, with the exception of Providence Park in Portland, Oregon, have grass playing surfaces. The remaining stadiums with artificial turf surfaces are mostly used by teams sharing their venues with other sports, including American football.[2] Pitch sizes range from a width of 70 yards (64 m) used by New York City FC at Yankee Stadium and the Houston Dynamo at Shell Energy Stadium, to 80 yards (73 m) used by the LA Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park.[3]
As with the other major North American sports leagues, the majority of MLS stadiums have sold their naming rights to corporations. BC Place, Citypark, Soldier Field, and Yankee Stadium are the only current MLS stadiums without a corporate-sponsored name. (Citypark is a temporary placeholder name while St. Louis City SC seeks a new stadium naming rights sponsor.[4])
(2025)